


a kindness full of wanting

by uninvitedtrashcan



Category: We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/F, Post True Ending (We Know the Devil)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-10-25 03:18:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17717036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uninvitedtrashcan/pseuds/uninvitedtrashcan
Summary: a green beginning; an orange beginning; a lilac beginning; a black (true) beginning.





	1. immersion

preparing to welcome the newcomers to camp, Venus strings up the guitar; the bridge’s diode hums softly beneath her fingers. it’s a beautiful piece of instrument, supple and coiling, with a small piece of sharpness -courtesy of Jupiter- wrapped onto the end.

two eyes blink at the lightbringer’s shoulder; Neptune approaches. river washing up on its mud-trodden banks, her water kisses Venus’s toes, summits her ankles; calf; knee, till she’s questioning her thigh and has the glowing one smiling, setting guitar aside. cupping hands (just two, without Jupiter) she drinks of the water. “you’re running clear this morning.”

“there’s not been any lies, this morning.”

group south is calling to one another in the distance, their voices clear now, individual; each one brings Venus a different flavor of warmth as they reach out to her, easy— giving. the song of their laughter echos about the sirens, which hang, closer to women of the water than angry warnings. they have made a bad thing here (it’s lovely).

though time seems likes something of His, Neptune does not like to be kept waiting. her patience is for roots and growing things and bright hot fires of honesty; her wanting she lets flow freely, coming cleaner with each piece of kissing (she is kissing now, lips like pale shells, skin floral as she moves as a flower trailing the sun, clothing the lightbringer). the hum of the diode is matched by Venus; she has spent so long wanting, everything is colored by it. once, that color blinded her; today, she paints with it.

her new body seems infinitely talented. here it gives, there it softens; that part grows heady, this one feels steady. there is no shell to shrug off. she has become that animal warm center. Neptune is a moth to a flame, a cool damp melding with sun-scorched shore. they balance, temper, neither one diminishing the other. her legs find waist and wash about it, abdomens rising with breath, touching with warmth. a flutter of laughter shakes them; they fall back, back into her pores—


	2. incineration

heat languishes in the forest, stirring up clouds of flies; a sign of life— of rot no longer. heat that suffocates, a kind of touch, one to the neck, the flushing breastbone, the soles of her feet. Jupiter leans into it. touch is omnipresent now, every inch of body caressed. touch that tastes like overripe fruit; excessive; sweet. it is unbearable. pain rings her tongue, throat, bobbing with every swallow. sensation revitalises. touch is allowed. pleasure inhabits.

beneath fingers, the crackling of bark offers aged maps of sensation; here a ridge, there the fallow. she holds knees to chest no longer; everything expands outwards. divisions subsided. night became day and the sun heated her night. Venus watches from branches, diffusing through leaves, rolling back and dripping to ground like honey. she slides down storm’s cheek as tears overcome her. it is too much, being happy. her new heart is all full of hurting (like fire; like lightning).

summer bakes the wood to the smell of dust and starvation, turning everything to tinder. sirens call out for Neptune; she is waiting, letting Jupiter savor the heat. too much touch has been missed out on; summer festered, unexperienced. shoes distanced the leaves from her knowing, the rocking shut from all others. light permeates the dust clouds. Venus has arms about her shoulders. they are kissing.

the cabin burned down some other morning (the bad girls did it). they tread among the ash, kicking shadows up in plumes. she traces an arm here; electricity kisses her just _there_. He is not bright enough to compare here, in any of His parables. Neptune washed all ink clear and devised writing of their own. mushrooms and fungi grow where words aren’t needed; there is the greenhouse with no glass, protected.  

beneath those folded hands, Jupiter has the enormity of planets. it scared her. it scares Him now. wind railing, she undoes hands, storm, letting the light sink through. it’s a marriage of triangular opposites, overseen by the Devil. ashes of envy catch in the breeze, vanishing.

she touches her, sirens screaming.


	3. instauration

ironically, water and electric are a match made in Heaven. the heatwave has broken and all the tension saturating the air shatters in the night’s storm. winds, furious and cleansing, whip the trees and branches, dismantling the telephone wires, shaking out the dust. by morning, everything shall be renewed; for now, nursing sunspots, Venus stays resting. rain, the drumming, freeing kind, drenches them. red and blue stand in the forest, hand in hand in hand, watching the world turn. 

water drenching skin, Jupiter feels held without touch. it is a rare snatch of breathing space, Neptune clearing the way like those monsoons that transform landscapes beyond recognition. the cold is a bone-deep kind, teeth chattering, muscles clenched and aching - their skin’s song echoes about the sirens, humming and whining. raindrops running down noses, pooling between lips; tongue, cautious, beading to taste, to touch. 

“sorry,” Jupiter mumbles, pulling lips apart, because, even if bodies have been discarded and the good people of God are all gone, she’s still in process; water washing down the valley of spinal chords and shivers. body or not, loving still hurts.

“you don’t need to be.” the rest goes unspoken, but they both remember:  _ not anymore _ . a hand kisses her neck, damp and cold and warm and seeing all at once. “is this okay?”

the storm winds sigh  _ yes _ . soon, they are flush with bark and one another, standing there, beacons of tentative exploration among woods that have overseen a hundred years and more. there is so much now; so much for the taking, fresh space breathed into existence as the rain empties out all that came before. it shall sink, like so much water does, to riverbeds and oceans, sediment and discarded sentiments. they shall kneel down, scoop it up, sand running through their fingers, as some things ask not to be forgotten. Neptune will keep it safe, buried until needed. 

lightning lighting the sky, they hold each other, searching. 

  
  
  
  
  



	4. completion

three girls temper the morning. light like hands caresses the dawning of flora and fauna, fresh or reemerging, coaxed out from storm hiding. but, as the world blossoms about them, they have eyes and hands and words only for one another (just for a little while and also for forever).

  
the hands of last night's storm have softened, grown lax, humming with the rising heat of day breaking. they find those spots of Neptune that feel too much sometimes and support them, unspeaking in the way that knows words don't always fit there. they find everything Venus fears unseen and holds it up to the light - her light. they are kind even when hurting, the other's catching them with gentle fingers when they go to turn in on herself; it still hurts, but laced fingers make everything that small bit sweeter.

  
the riverbanks, fat and swollen from the rainfall, eddy out upon the shore, spilling without malice or restraint. there's no damn to cage it now, blown away by the storm. the fear of escape left in a fading sort of glowing. free, the water rises and falls to meet them, easing sunburn and resting tired eyes. they float, the three of them, in snatches of weightlessness, catching them when they mistake themselves for falling. and when weightlessness is not enough, the sound of running water will be there to distract them through the hurting.

  
the seasons still come and go here, but Venus no longer fears the winter. times of hiding are just that, times, times that end and begin again and end once more. she waxes and wanes but always there is light enough for all of them. she is the candle burning to light Jupiter's way through the dark, the quiet companion that reveals how the hands have always been her own creation (there for her to take, to use, to cradle). she is the alien opposite of Neptune's waters, lending her definition, disproving all the worst fears when they nonetheless merge and talk together. she does not negate the darkness, but provides the shelter to see it.

  
their kisses are tender as they pervade new depths, new spaces, bringing touch to those destitute corridors sealed off before. here Neptune's abdomen is allowed to sink and flutter; here there are kisses. there Jupiter's wrist is coloring from the sting of pink to a myriad of colours, all of them kisses. now Venus can breathe through her own lungs, the shudder of breath shared by three, the shiver of kisses.

  
guitar in hand, Jupiter is strumming so that they might sing. God is no longer in the radio (or, if He is, He isn't speaking to them right now; His specialty always was the silent treatment) and with last night's rain nursing the flowers, there's a silence wanting filling. it's an old song, a new song, three voices harmonising across the frequencies in hope that you might hear them. there's a place, right here, waiting for you.

 

take your time; we'll be waiting.


End file.
